Back In The Day

Back In The Day

Circa 1908
You left ghosts
Good ones
Memories
Mark corners
As a dog every tree and bush
Buried bones
In cracks in floors and ceiling
Bust open, every door
We escape
The heat
Of the day
Going out then in
As if it were an Olympic sport
This sitting on the porch

If you can’t stand the sitting
Stand up
Get outside awhile
Air your dirty laundry
Everyone below can hear
Your voice carries

Rising up and through
The oaks

Down the road the sanatoriums
Sprang up
A million mushrooms
After the rain
To house the sick

Breath deep
The air it heals

Did you sit as long as we
You visions of the past
Rocking back and forth
Trapping every smell of lilac,
Rot, wet earth
From the hills

We identify every waft
That wanders by
Anchoring our living
Senses fully engaged
Right here, right now
Frozen
On the edge of boxwood and vine
Perched like birds for hours
Watching them

Watch us
Lose all track of time
The train will whistle
Wakes us up

You left us more than memorabilia
But a metronome
Set on slow
And barely moving
To pace our days
Tasting wet rain mornings
Pallet cleanser

Come and linger long
On the edges of the sides of hills
Anchor here
Upon the slippery slope
Lingering
Life
Measured in the sightings of the finch
Don’t blink you’ll miss the high point of the day

How strange
We may live  even slower
When we come through the gate
Than
You, ghosts of
Circa nineteen hundred and

oh eight

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Joining Sandra Heska King for Still Saturday